Page 15 of Shargh newspaper contained the headline: “The promises of the Minister of ICT to clear the problems of mobile social media. Those responsible at the ministry are preparing a campaign.” Screenshot by author.

Iran's leading reformist newspaper, Shargh, ran an article this past Sunday entitled: “The promises of the Minister of ICT to clear the problems of mobile social media.” The focus of Iran's Minister of Information and Communication Technology Mahmoud Vaezi was the filtering status of popular mobile applications, with a particular focus on Instagram.

You should not be worried. Our policy is that we will not restrict the activities of any mobile social media, and when we do announce it, it will be when we find an alternative for this network inside the country.

The popularity of mobile applications has led to some directives from institutions outside of the current administration's hands, such as the Judiciary for filtering. Iran's judiciary is independent from the president's office, reporting only to the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. Shargh noted:

After a few warnings given to government by higher authorities, the ministry decided to use smart filtering, which will be the priority in the government’s program to watch the social networks, because Vaezi believes all the materials published by these networks are not bad. Close to 90% of the materials publicized on these networks are clean materials.

Current smart filtering of Instagram pages means select pages are blocked from viewing by Iranians on their mobile applications.

Following the publication of this post, one Internet researcher, Amir Rashidi noted the Minister's statement regarding no viable ‘alternatives’ is a political form of appeasement between hardline elements (such as in the judiciary) and those who support more Internet freedom (such as the Rouhani administration). As noted in the Tweet below by researcher Nariman Gharib, Lenzor exists as a local Iranian alternative to Instagram.